About Me

“It’s not the having, it’s the getting.” (Elizabeth Taylor)

I am all about the getting: getting the joke, getting the guy, getting what you deserve.

Yes, to your right, are my bomb kicks and my un-retouched legs. Spinning, vegetables, sex…it all does a body good! But it took me a while to “get” that.

I’m 99 percent sure there’s a 300 pound gay man inside me, just waiting for that bad breakup/bagel-and-tequila binge that is going to allow him to come out.

I’m the kind of girl who can gain five pounds just smelling pizza and lose five pounds by dropping cheese for a week; luckily, I’m a total consumer, so I often apply my “What can I try next?” mentality to diet and exercise.

My weight has fluctuated over the years. As a kid, I played sports but I ate a good amount of McDonald’s. I knew nothing about good nutrition. Junior and senior year of high school, I stopped playing sports (softball and cheerleading) and started doing theater. Being a theater kid made me 100 times more unpopular/emo and since there were no straight guys to impress, I just packed on the pounds. I spent senior year eating French fries and feelings, washed down with a lot of cherry Coke. I told myself that given my, ahem, ample chest, I couldn’t exercise and that I was never going to be a thin girl. By my high school graduation, I weighed over 200 pounds. Not a thin girl, indeed.

Right after my eighteenth birthday I had an awesome breast reduction surgery. Besides giving me normal (slash fabulous) boobs, I dropped 10 pounds while I recovered. Hmmmm….

A few weeks later, I moved into my own apartment in Chicago. Well, then I had to learn to cook! I joined a gym, and because I was only taking college classes two days a week, I had a lot of extra time on my hands. Without a lot of fanfare, I just decided to lose some more weight. At first I could only do 15 minutes on the elliptical and run for one minute, but, given the fact that I had no life, I started spending more time at the gym and built up to doing more cardio. In terms of eating, I just started collecting tips from my favorite magazines like Self and Shape and started to understand nutrition…you know…fiber, fat grams, whole grains, etc. I was down about 20 pounds by the time I went home for Christmas. From there on, weight loss was slow and steady. I hit a couple plateaus but was able to keep on and I finally lost enough to hit my goal weight (which was still slightly more than healthy for my height “according to the experts”).

Then I transferred to a Big Ten school and started doing the dorm cafeteria and college drinking thing. Then I went abroad and drank and ate my way across the UK. THEN I got dumped and spent a semester drinking, crying, and eating (and watching hours of Grey’s Anatomy in bed). Awesome. By second semester, I felt awful! So I decided to drastically lose weight, following no healthy methods. Seriously. I was like a bad article in Seventeen Magazine. I got hooked on diet pills, which continued through the summer, and by August I was thinner than I’d ever been, but totally unhealthy. I felt like a rotten apple…you think it’s good and then you bite into it and it’s mushy and disgusting. I decided it was time to build a strong body, and started running, lifting weights, and doing Pilates. And that’s how I got my best body ever!

So, I went back to school that fall, all lithe and popular…but wouldn’t you know, being popular led to more bad boys, drinks, and tears! [See also: "The Five Stages of Getting Weight Loss Grief"] I slowly gained weight again….I was clearly becoming Oprah.

One good thing was that my 2008 New Year’s resolution was to take a Spinning class. And I did, and I got hooked. Spinning completely changed how I looked at exercise and I realized what my body was capable of. No matter how I ate, I still went to Spinning a few times a week, which kept my heart and lungs in great condition, and my ass lifted toward the sky, where I want it.

I graduated and moved to New York to work at ELLE magazine (and yes, it is like the movie “Devil Wears Prada”). I started to take weight off, and finally boys and alcohol stopped getting in the way. Of course, life still did. It was a slow process. Some losses. Some gains. My 2009 resolution was to join a running club and train for a half marathon. My workouts were becoming boring and felt like work. I needed a purpose. So my roommate and I started to train for a Memorial Day half marathon in Boston. I felt great–I just followed the schedule and I started to get in great shape; losing weight was just a bonus.

Except then I went and got injured! Never in my life has that shit happened. After many doctors’ appointments and MRIs, I was tossed into physical therapy and banned from all exercise. It was horrible. I had to miss work and I started living like a character in Valley of the Dolls, hopped up on lots of painkillers. Since I couldn’t work out, I just partied. So by the time my hip healed, I was not only out of shape, I was rocking an awesome spare tire.

It was time for a big change. I left my job because it wasn’t what I wanted to do. The only reason I ended up at a magazine was because I wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately, I spent my days getting super important pairs of shoes from Milan to the U.S. in time for photo shoots. It had its perks, don’t get me wrong, but it sucked the life out of me because it just wasn’t my passion. Doing something I am passionate about — writing about fitness, food, beauty, and sexting — was what was missing in my life. [See also: 2010 is Going to Be Epic.]

After finally getting my head in the right spot, I finally lost the injury weight and built a much stronger body! I finally gave up the crack in a can (Diet Coke), the little packets of meth (Splenda), and all the artificial “diet” foods (Fiber One bars, Light N Fit yogurt, and all their little sugar-free friends) I lived on for three years. I finished a half-marathon in October and a full marathon on Jan. 10, 2010. Am I a “runner”? No, definitely not, but I knew running what what I needed to fix my relationship with food and my self-image.

The fact is, I’ve learned through a lot of trial and error what works and what doesn’t, and after giving lots of informal advice to friends and strangers (you’d be surprised how many total strangers will just ask you to tell them how to lose weight, often at inopportune times, like in a cab, or when you’re getting your hair done), I’m ready to go public. I know and have tried more things than I should probably even admit.

You can check out my basic principles to get an idea of what I’m all about. I’m mostly concerned with helping people learn to cook food that nourishes them and find a way to enjoy the moving your body and the feeling of empowerment that accompanies both.

I LOVE working out. I like a workout to be like sex; when I get off, I want to be drenched, red in the face, and unable to form vowels. And I love healthy food too! I just love all food…and I love a cocktail (or six)! Seriously, if it weren’t for tequila, I’d surely have Kelly Ripa’s bod by now.

I am an ACE certified personal trainer, but I am not a registered dietitian or a doctor, so be sure to listen to your body and your MD! (Even if your MD is just the hot one from “The Doctors”…mine is.) If you’re interested in how I became a trainer, check out this post.

Oh and if you don’t believe me when I say I used to be heavy, here is the before pic (more here)…

Clearly, I was one pint of Ben & Jerry’s away from “The Biggest Loser.” But here’s an “After”!!

So yeah, I get it now.

And BTW, I love to hear from you! Don’t lurk…holler at me with comments, come hang out with me on Twitter, and stalk me on the FB! (Just please introduce yourself!) If you have questions or comments, free to holler at me here!

If you’re interested in my work (writing, comedy, videos, social media, health consulting, public speaking, personal training, or group fitness), please get in touch! I am always looking for new opportunities and I love, love, LOVE all I can do with the blessed internet.

Love you mean it~ Rachel